International Cooperation and Sustainable Development (ICSD) Division is the nodal point within the Ministry for United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Nairobi, South Asia Cooperative Environment Programme (SACEP), Colombo and the matters relating to sustainable development. The Division also handles bilateral issues and matters pertaining to multilateral bodies such as the Commission on Sustainable Development, Global Environment Facility (GEF) and the regional bodies like Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP), South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), European Union (EU) and the India-Canada Environment Facility.
The Ministry is also the nodal agency for various environment related multilateral conventions and protocols. These include Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl habitat, Vienna Convention for the protection of the Ozone Layer, Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, Conventions on Biological Diversity, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto Protocol, the Basel Convention on Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Substances, Convention to Combat.
Desertification and Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, etc. During the year, India participated in many seminars/workshop, etc., i.e., 23rd and 24th sessions of GEF Council held in Washington D.C.; SAARC Technical Committee on Ministerial meeting on environment at Thimpu, Bhutan; Seminar on Performance Based Allocation Framework for GEF Resources in Paris; France and Regional Preparatory Meeting for Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development at Bangkok, International Seminar on Future Governance of UNEP at Stockholm, Sweden; Regional Workshop on Integrated Capacity Development for MEA's (National Capacity Self Assessment) in South Asia at Colombo; Asian Regional Consolation of International Task Force on GPG's in Manila, Philippines; Governing Council of UNEP/GMEP at Nairobi and Ministerial Conference on Environment and Development (MCED) at Seoul, Korea. Besides this, India presented its national report entitled 'Mitigating Poverty - Water, Sanitation and human settlement in the 12th session of Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD).
The Ministry has taken up several activities in area of Sustainable Development also like Preparation of State of Environment Report, Formulation of Sustainable Development Indicators (SDI), Formation of National Strategies for Sustainable Development, Global Public Goods and Partnership for Sustainable Development.
